The Food and Drug Administration’s unprecedented approval of Florida’s plan to import drugs from Canada was made possible only after Alex Azar, as the Trump administration’s Health and Human Services secretary, certified that bringing medicines over the border could be done safely.
Azar made the historic declaration in September 2020, just two months before his boss, former President Donald Trump, lost reelection.
Now, Azar’s involved in the business of making importation happen. He is chairman of the board of LifeScience Logistics, a Dallas-based company that Florida is paying as much as $39 million to help manage its Canadian drug importation program, not including the cost of drugs.
LifeScience officials confirmed Azar’s position but didn’t respond to questions about how much he is paid or whether he’s involved in the Florida work. Azar didn’t return messages left with his employers or sent to a personal email address.
Canada should definitely prioritise its own manufacturing, but I’d say banning goes too far. It’s possible to control exports without diminishing domestic supplies.
Short term it might be an issue, but wouldn’t this be a good opening for more manufacturing capacity to come online which then means more profits for Canadian manufacturers and more taxes for the government?
Seems like a new gold mine if done properly
Yes exactly. There is room for Canadian businesses to profit, and for Canadian soceity to profit through tax income, with no implication to the Canadian public health service - all the while still providing far cheaper products to the US market.
However this would require extremely tight regulation of the drug production market, such that they can’t increase prices in Canada or prioritise selling to the US.
How much of the Canadian drug supply is imported from the US in the first place? How many manufacturers in Canada are independent and not just local operations of international pharmaceutical companies?
In those scenarios why would they ship more drugs to Canada to be reimported into the US or expand their manufacturing capabilities in Canada? To sell the drugs at a lower price than they can get by selling them in the US directly? They’d be losing money. Instead they’d keep the Canadian imports/manufacturing flat or on pace with existing growth in the country so that there will be shortages and export restrictions.
If politicians in Florida of all places like the benefits of Canadian price controls then perhaps they should start adopting them here in the US.
Canada only has one Canadian-owned pharma company (Apotex). The rest are all foreign-owned. :/